ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — The 76ers played their second preseason game Saturday night at venerable Boardwalk Hall, where the Beatles once performed and brawler Arturo Gatti 15 times both bludgeoned and was bludgeoned by opponents.

It is a building with a history, an old, familiar friend in a town where casinos are erected and casinos are demolished regularly.

Last season the 76ers, despite being a fairly young team, were old, familiar friends in the ever-changing world of NBA rosters. They returned almost everyone from the season before. That familiarity played up big in the first two months of that lockout-shortened season. By the time the Sixers played their second preseason game a year ago, it was go-time for the regular season, and no team was more game-ready than the Sixers.

After two exhibition games this year...well, just be thankful there is a full preseason and normalized regular-season practice schedule in effect. Because it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which the Sixers finish their first 20 regular-season games without some discontentment about their performance.

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“With eight new guys?” Collins said, imagining if this year’s team faced last year’s circumstances. “Oh my gosh, I would be on suicide watch.”

The Sixers finished four quarters and the always-popular five-minute bonus basketball session with a 108-105 loss to the Brooklyn Nets. But the game only went to overtime because the Sixers erased an 18-point fourth-quarter deficit, as Nick Young went off while the Nets were playing deep subs.

There were some good things — namely, Maalik Wayns, who not only is going to make this team as an undrafted free agent out of Villanova, but is starting to force-feed his way into honest-to-goodness minutes.

However, there were disturbing things. That Kwame Brown-Spencer Hawes “Twin Towers” experiment is more of a Chagrin Towers boondoggle. Yes, Andrew Bynum ought to make that pairing not nearly as necessary once he returns to the court, but that does require him actually returning to the court. And the more time the centerpiece of the team is absent, the more uncomfortable it will be trying to create synergy.

Evan Turner, whom everyone hoped would enter his third year ready to replace Andre Iguodala, flat-out isn’t — at either end. Gerald Wallace abused him. There’s no nice way of putting it, even though Collins tried to keep Turner’s confidence up by saying he got better as the game went on. (Considering he couldn’t have been much worse than the opening quarter...OK.)

And after such a crazily compact 2011-12 season, it’s clear the players mostly rested this summer. Collins sees some veterans not in peak condition, and he figures with five preseason games in eight days, he will need to see them work their way into playing shape.

Collins seemed to cajole Jrue Holiday into becoming the backcourt scorer by starting offensive vacuum Royal Ivey alongside him Saturday night. Eventually Wayns will get a shot to share time back there with Holiday, probably in the next preseason game.

Some factors should be pointed out: Neither Jason Richardson nor Dorell Wright played a second in this game, and those are two players who either will offer a complement to Turner, or get him glued to the bench if he doesn’t start figuring things out. And this is still early for a team that has just five players from last season back.

But there are a lot of scattered pieces in front of Collins at the moment, and no matter how skilled he is as a coach, it will take some time to figure out how, exactly, this team is going to function best.

“We are going to need all the time,” Collins said. “Normally I’d give (Sunday) off, but we have to figure some things out.

“This is a different situation.”

In the long haul, it ought to be a better situation, one with higher goals and deeper paths into the postseason. But in order to reach those expectations, the Sixers have to survive a bludgeoning or three and make sure the people who keep the franchise’s wrecking ball in storage doesn’t get an itchy trigger finger.